The 27th Doctor
by joethulhu
Summary: After his 26th regeneration, the Doctor sets out on a whole new set of adventures, meeting adversaries both new and old.  Tentative - depending on response, it may or may not continue
1. Regeneration

A/N: Short opening chapter. It gets longer. And better. Trust me. Please read and review! I'll only make more if a few people review!

The people passing by on the street did not seem to notice the mechanical, grating noise made by the strange blue box, nor did they take pause upon its sudden appearance where there was once only sidewalk. They didn't even stir when a raggedy-looking man with wild hair stumbled out of it, bright golden light spewing from seemingly every orifice it could find. As his face shifted and moved, as if there were a thousand insects living underneath his skin. After a few seconds, the bumps on his face burst and the light brightened once more, before finally fading out. After that, there was a different face beneath. He rubbed his face with his hands – studying them a bit first, as if he'd never seen them before – and then blinked his eyes three times, before turning and shutting one of two doors on the strange blue box and locking it with a key, which he then dropped into a pocket of the large woolen overcoat he had, about three sizes too large. Then he glanced around the street for a police officer, before finding one and walking towards him.

"Hullo there, officer!" he said, chipper as anyone else on the street, despite the odd circumstances of his appearance.

"Um, hello," said the officer, quite flabbergasted.

"Would you mind telling me what year it happens to be?"

This gave the officer pause, as the strange man pulled a small cylinder-shaped object with innumerable dials and lights all up and down its body, ending in a smaller cylinder extending about an inch from the top with a spherical blue light at the top, above a small metallic disk. He fiddled with it for a minute, the light blinking and sputtering, while strange wobbling noises emitted from it.

"And why," asked the officer, "would you need to know that?"

"Know what?" said the man, before immediately remembering what he had asked. "Ah, yes. The year. Well, you see, uh, I've got amnesia. Or something else that makes me forget things. And I don't know."

"I doubt that, somehow," said the officer, "but I'll tell you anyway. It's 1987."

The man winced.

"Ooh, not good, I ran around London a good bit in that year. Bad stuff always happens when I meet myself. Better head out. Sometime in the Nineties, maybe."

"Sorry, what did you say your name was?"

"They call me the Doctor. Rather, I tell them to call me that. Can't seem to remember why, but it's better than my real name. Nasty, it is. Never liked it."

At this, the man turned and ran back to his strange blue box, unlocking the door and stepping inside. The police officer watched him the whole time, all the way up until the box began to seem to fade away, and made the same mechanical, grating noise again, until it disappeared completely.


	2. John

A few seconds after the box had disappeared, it appeared once more. The Doctor once more stumbled out of the box, turned his head, saw the police officer, and walked towards him.

"Pardon me, officer, and don't ask why, but what year would it happen to be?"

The police officer, not sure what to say, stammered for about a minute.

"Please be quick, I have all the time in the world."

"Isn't that a sort of oxymoron?"

"Hmm? Well. Yes. Only, no. That is to say, it's not if you're me. I think."

"…Right. Weren't you just here, though?"

"Was I? Oh. Oh, dear. That can't be good. Something must be wrong with the TARDIS' navigational systems. Probably regeneration, but it could be something else."

"Sorry. You're not making much sense."

"Yes, well, I wouldn't expect you to think so. It's a bit confusing to someone new. By the way, would you like to see it?"

"See what, exactly?"

"The TARDIS! Well, you CAN see it, obviously, but I mean, see inside it."

"What, you mean that box over there? It looks a bit like a phone booth…"

"Hmm? Phone booth? Oh, well, yes, I suppose it is. Ooh, but it's not a phone booth on the inside. MUCH more interesting than that."

The officer didn't really think it'd be a great idea to follow a random, strange man into a small phone booth but had the distinct feeling he always had when something was awry. Cautiously, he followed the Doctor into the TARDIS. He gasped.

"It's –"

"What is this, Monty Python?" asked the Doctor, annoyed all of a sudden for no particular reason. "Yes," he said in a sarcastic tone, "it's bigger on the inside… I've been through it before. Now. What's your name?"

"Er, John, sir…"

"Ah, John. Wonderful. Never had a John before. Had a Jack once – er, twice – no, wait, that was the same person, different me – er, point being, never had a John. Welcome aboard, John."

The Doctor extended his hand in John's direction, but John did nothing.

"Welcome aboard? What do you mean by that?"

"Well," said the Doctor, withdrawing his hand and walking over to a large circular console in the middle of the room and fiddling with assorted levers, "I assumed you might want to come with me. Don't worry, you won't miss your post, we can have you back only a few seconds after we leave!"

"I'm afraid, Doctor, or whatever you said your name was," said John, rubbing his eyes to check if what he was seeing was real, "I don't really quite understand what all this is."

"Well, it's a TARDIS, I'm the Doctor, and you're John."

"And what, exactly, is a TARDIS?"

"Time And Relative Dimension In Space."

"Excuse me?"

The Doctor turned to John, leaving all of his levers alone, stared him in the eye, grinned from ear to ear and said "It's a time machine."

"You're crazy," said John, laughing and gesturing as he spoke. "There is no possible way this could be a time machine. You're just some crazy man who probably killed his wife or something, and you're trying to run away by taking a police officer hostage."

"Ooh, harsh," the Doctor said, visibly hurt. "Naw, I just want someone to keep me company. Last one stabbed me."

"Stabbed you? Is that why you looked for a police officer?"

"What? Oh. No. It's about thirty years before she's born. No use looking for someone who hasn't existed yet! And, if we went back to where I picked her up from, you wouldn't be a police officer (unless you were planning to move to Essex at around that time), and I'm sure she's long gone anyway. Well. Not long gone before I found her, and not so the times I stopped back for her to visit, or when I shoved her out after she tried to kill me, but – no, you get the drift. Anyway the TARDIS doesn't seem to be working right. It'll travel through space, according to my screwdriver," (the Doctor held up the odd cylinder he'd been messing with earlier) "but not through time."

"So," said the Doctor, putting up his screwdriver and looking at John, a grin on his face, "where on Earth do you want to go? Scratch that – where in the UNIVERSE do you want to go?"

"Er, if I have to choose," said John, putting his hand to his chin, "I'd have to say I quite like Spain."

"Wonderful choice! Marvelous choice! Let's to Barcelona. Spain's Barcelona, of course. Not the other Barcelona. Though we could go there. I probably will take you there one day. Anyway, SPAIN!"

The Doctor wandered over to his console, with John peering over his shoulder, and began to fiddle with levers, before pulling a slide whistle out of a hole in it, blowing a note, and sticking it back it. The ground began to shake and the same mechanical noise began. After a few seconds it stopped and the Doctor ran to the door of the TARDIS and peeked his head out. Once he returned, he had a puzzled expression on his face.

"That's not Spain," he said, rubbing his jaw. "That's London. But why are we still in London?"

He pulled out his screwdriver once more and fiddled with it a bit, pointing it at certain parts of the TARDIS and manipulating the dials on the side. Once he was apparently finished, he pulled the screwdriver at both ends and it extended almost half a foot, a view screen appearing in the middle. The screen looked as if it were not pixels at all, but digital ink. The ink arranged itself into various symbols, which appeared to form words, but John couldn't recognize them.

"Well that's never happened before," said the Doctor, worried, as he put away his screwdriver.

"What seems to be the proble, Doctor?" asked John, beginning to be concerned as well.

"The TARDIS," said the Doctor, the most solemn he'd ever been before, "is sick."


	3. The Two Doctors

"Is this, ehm… Bad?"  
>"Eh. Yes. But not exactly, eh, what's the word? Urgent. Yeh. TARDIS will get better.<p>

Just means we're stuck here. And the TARDIS never sticks me somewhere without purpose. Ew, hope it's not Cybermen. Been a while since I've seen them, and I'd like to keep it that way. Well, for now, I've got to get dressed. This overcoat has gotten old."

The Doctor swaggered off to the side of the TARDIS, while John stood confused, before following him into a long corridor, which in turn branched off into a room with only a large wardrobe.

"We going to Narnia now?" asked John.

"What's Narnia?" asked the Doctor, confusion on his face.

"Oh, nothing. But seeing everything that's happened so far I wouldn't rule it out."

"…Right." The Doctor hopped on over to the wardrobe, flung it open, and dragged out several boxes of clothing. Opening one, he was confronted with a large assortment of scarves.

"Ew! Scarves! Why would I ever go around wearing scarves?"

The Doctor threw the box of scarves off to the side and grabbed for another, which contained bow-ties in all colors of the rainbow.

"Oh, God! Was my fashion sense REALLY this bad? Bow-ties! Who wears a bow-tie anymore?"

The Doctor flung the box behind his back, nearly smacking John in the face, but he managed to dodge it. After this, the Doctor retreated into the wardrobe and didn't come out for around twenty minutes. At about the moment John has decided that the Doctor was truly mad and had left him completely, he emerged from the wardrobe wearing a vest the same shade as the TARDIS, a white starched shirt with the sleeves rolled up almost to the shoulders, and dress pants.

"Right! Time for the mirror. Gotta, ye know, fix me hair."

A mirror sat in the corner out of John's view, which the Doctor promptly pointed at. John moved further into the room to get a better view. The Doctor stepped up to the mirror and moved his hands through his hair. It was very messy, pretty much no order to it whatsoever. The Doctor seemed to notice this, and frowned.

"Messy, messy. Am I messy now? Ooh, I hope not. Messy is not good. Or is it? Mmm. If I'm messy now I suppose that'd be good, eh? Ew, I've said 'eh'. Am I Canadian now?"

He turned to John.

"Am I Canadian?"

"Erm, no, Doctor, if anything you sound a tad Welsh."

"Mmm. Wales. I like Wales. Good Wales. Great Wales. Not ginger though. Never ginger. Why am I never ginger? Hom. Wonders of the universe, eh? I want to be ginger, I'm not ginger. I don't want to be blonde again, what do you know? Twenty in, and I'm blonde three times. Twice in a row, even! Nasty, nasty universe! Stop being mean to me! I don't like it."

At this point John had decided that the Doctor was definitely completely mad. He began consciously planning his escape from the Doctor if he was attacked by him, which, and John saw it, was becoming more and more likely every second.

"You mind, um, explaining that thing you did when you stepped out of the phone booth the first time?"

"Hmm? What? The light? Oh. Regeneration, nothing to worry about."

"You mean healing a wound?"

"Well, not unless it's fatal or not long after regeneration, no, I mean, regeneration is more, I get stabbed and die, but then I don't die, I just become someone else."

"Someone else?"

"I get a new face. See?"

The Doctor grabbed his cheeks and stretched his skin into a macabre grin.

"And do you do that forever?"

"Well, technically I'm only supposed to do it twelve times. Bypassed that somehow. Still not sure myself. It was all glowey. Couldn't see. Rebecca was confused. But then, Rebecca was always confused. Haven't seen her in a while. Maybe I'll visit. At any rate, it's time to go and look around, now that I'm all dressed up. I think I'll leave me hair like it is. Messy good. Good messy. Mm, yes."

The Doctor tousled his hair one more time and then shoved his hands into his vest pocket, before swaggering out into the corridor and towards the entrance. John stood for a moment, trying to take in what was happening. He'd been doing a lot of that recently. Standing there and trying to comprehend the current events. He decided he'd stop doing that and ran off towards the Doctor.

The Doctor swung the door open viciously and stomped out. He looked around a moment and then pulled out his screwdriver and waved it around a bit before looking at it again.

"No signs of alien technology! We should be safe. TARDIS needs to regenerate, too, so let's just wander around a bit, shall we?"

"Er," said John, "I'm kind of on my beat."

"Oh! Right. Of course. I'll wander by myself, then. I'd give it a few hours to regenerate, so if you want to come with me, be back here at…"

He whipped out his screwdriver and appeared to be checking the time.

"Be here at about six, then. Eighteen-hundred. Right. See you, John!"

The Doctor casually waved and then raced off to John's left, at the exact moment that he came running back on John's right.

"Hullo, John! Good fellow! Time to go!"

The Doctor slapped a hand on John's back and tried to shove him into the TARDIS.

"Er, Doctor," John said, quite alarmed, "You were just here."

"I was?"

There was a strange silence for a few seconds.

"Well, it happens. Not good though. Come, come!"

John was forcibly shoved into the TARDIS, and the Doctor tried to operate it. It was still unresponsive.

"Ah! Was I really just here? Then something's gone terribly, terribly wrong."

The Doctor became extremely somber and turned to John.

"John, this is important. I need you to find me."

John poked the Doctor's cheek.

"Done."

"No, no, not me, but the other me, the me that ran off right before I got here."

"Ah," said John, beginning his sentences with two-letter onomatopoeias as usual, "but Doctor, why would I have to do that? You're right here."

"Well. Yes. But no. I'm not. See, this is me when a few hours have passed. Dunno what happened, but no time passed for you. That was me when I was going to skip about for a few hours. I need you to find happy, skippy me and give me this."

The Doctor pressed a slip of paper into John's hand and shoved him out of the door. He stood, puzzled for a moment, before nervously walking off in the direction the Doctor had headed.

The Doctor wandered about 1987 London with a general attitude of "been there, done that." Nothing was ever new for him anymore, but it hadn't been too long since he'd been to 1987, so it was especially stale. He began to wander the back alleys in hopes of encountering trouble. There was none, until a woman came running at him. She wasn't looking at where she was going, and running quite fast. She collided with him head-on and knocked him down.

"Oof," she said, as all of the air was pushed out of the Doctor's lungs.

"Oof," he said in reply.

"Sorry, sorry," she said, busily putting spilled items back into the small purse she was carrying, making sure not to make eye contact with the person she'd just shoved onto the asphalt.

"Oi, what're you doin' running about and knocking strangers over?"

She smiled a little fake smile.

"Eh, it's nothing, really, just me being clumsy, I'll be going soon-"

"No, you're not," said the Doctor, putting an arm around her shoulder. "Tell me what happened."

"It's nothing, really-"

"Ah, no, don't you do that. Tell me. Come on. You can trust the stranger with the shiny blue stick."

He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and waved it around for a second, before twirling it on his finger and then shoving it back into his vest.

"Trust me. I'm the Doctor."

The woman still hesitated, but finally broke down.

"My date tried to kill me!"

She was now on her knees in the alleyway, sobbing.

"How?"

"What do you mean, how?"

She was clearly perturbed by his nonchalant attitude towards it.

"I mean, did he pull out a knife? Gun? What?"

"Well, that's the odd part, he didn't, really… He more, sort of, tried to kiss me to death."

Now, the Doctor was interested.


	4. Yhr Dihb

A/N: I'm getting a new computer soon, so I've just written a short chapter to feed the readers for a while. More will come, but not for a few weeks, as I make the transition.

"Tell me about your date, then."

The Doctor leaned down to the level of the woman sitting on the alleyway's asphalt. He peered at her, trying to comfort her. Unfortunately, it was only unsettling her. Apparently it'd only worked in his fourth and tenth incarnations. Instead, her just put a hand on her shoulder.

"C'mon. You can tell me."

She looked at him, terrified and panting. The Doctor tried to send messages of understanding and comfort to her through his (non-peering) eyes. It didn't work. She still struggled to escape from him, and he had to grab her arms and hold her still.

"Tell me. Now. I might be the only one who can help you."

He could tell she was frightened out of her mind, and he couldn't do much to help. Eventually she calmed down, however.

"Alright – I'll tell you. I suppose it couldn't hurt."

"Yes, that's right… Tell me…"

"It was our third date. It was all going swimmingly, and then I tried to kiss him, and his head – oh God! His head exploded! It turned grey and became this huge sucker – like an octopus' tentacle – and he got my head in it, and then – I can't talk about it!"

She collapsed once more, sobbing on the Doctor's lap.

"Yes, go on. I need to hear all of it."

She was now crying literal puddles. The Doctor's trousers were ruined. Her mascara was staining them as it ran all over.

"Ooookay," he said, pulling her up, "I think you might ought to sit up."

"It was horrible!"

"Aaaand talk, yes, do that."

"He had my head in his mouth, thing! But I pushed him away and ran! I've never been so scared my whole life!"

"Mmm-hmm, that's very nice. Now, would you say he looked more like… This?"

The Doctor held out his screwdriver, the screen of which was showing a grey tentacle-headed monster.

"Or… This?"

The Doctor pressed something and the screen showed another creature.

"Hmm? No? Oooookay, maybe… This?"

Another image popped up and the woman squealed.

"Aaah, so that's it, yes…"

The Doctor gently shoved the woman off his lap and and fiddled some more with his screwdriver.

"Yhr Dihb, we meet again."

"What?"

The woman was confused. The Doctor raised his eyebrows and attempted to explain.

"Well, see, they're ah, aliens, and he just tried to make you his mate and take you back to his home world so that you could produce up to a thousand new little Yhr Dihbbies."

"…What?"

"Eeeeyup, it's preeeeetty creepy. You're lucky you got out when you did."

"You're insane!" She yelled, pushing the Doctor away.

"Yeah, that's what the last one said too, before she stabbed me."

"What are you talking about?"

"Weeeeell, see, I'm an alien too."

"You're crazy."

"Yeah, I believe we mentioned that already. But it's true. Wanna see my spaceship?"

"Yeah, right!" she said, slapping the Doctor. "You're just taking advantage of my situation!"

"No, no, see, I really am an alien. And I want to help you. Help. H-E-L-P. Heeeeellllllll-puh."

"And how could you do that?"

"Well, for starters, I could tell you that Yhr Dihb are perfectly harmless! Mostly."

"What does that mean?"

"I mean, he wouldn't have hurt you, just kidnapped you and taken you where no human has ever set foot."

The woman was silent.

"…Right. Anyway, the problem is, there has to be a reason he disguised himself as a human. Lemme check my screwdriver and get back to you."

The Doctor fiddled with more dials for a moment, turning his back on the woman. After about a minute he turned back towards her, a grin on his face, and spoke in an extremely ecstatic manner.

"Good news! He's not alone. It's an invasion fleet! Isn't that wonderful?"


End file.
